Interview Torment: Tides of Numenera Postmortem Interview with Colin McComb and Adam Heine at Eurogamer

[tripedal]

-1:26:50 Would you do anything differently? Short answer: nope!

jesus christ

 

[Darth Roxor]

Theres also a discussion about how the game looks , apparently even more of the game was supposed to be conveyed through descriptors

hahaha

 

[Darkzone]

Great artist are always capable to reproduce their genius and have not just one hit, because they understand the art.

Bullshit. Ability to create Good Shit is a limited and non-renewable resource. What we call "great artists" just had a bit more creative mana points to spend on more than one "hit". It still doesn't regenerate when they sleep, and blue potions don't really help (nor do yellow or transparent, there are persistent rumors about the green variety though, but I believe it to be urban myth).

When i have tried the green smoke and potion or the transparent and red potion, then i have discovered on the next morning that it was just shit what i have made on the evening before. But the evening was nice.
There is a rumor from times past, that there is a forbidden sacred paper with sacred ingredients and signs and runes, that one takes into their mouth and then the gods show you things beyond things with an sight beyond sight, and you can tab into the knowledge of the Universe and read also the sacred Akasha chronicle.

Spoiler

My point is that instead of talking about what makes great artists, we should be talking about what makes great development practices. While we should give credit where credit is due, there is too much arbitrary personality cult in discussions about game design, and this isn’t helpful. Rather than talking about who was what in a given game, we should be talking about who did such and such, and how everything they did matched together in the process. Maybe we don’t focus on this because we don’t have too much access to this information for the most part and have to rely on testimony and postmortems years later. This limitation leads to speculation, gossip and personality cult.

Yes. I only say Avellone appreciation / worship.
In nearly all Glassdoor reviews, it was clear that there is a lack of communication between the different departments. Also McComb and Heine said not intentionally and hidden that there was also not enough communication between the different authors.

 

[Sacred82]

I have a problem with this statement. Not because it is not intelligent, but because i have been there and done that. And now i think different.
Great artist are always capable to reproduce their genius and have not just one hit, because they understand the art.

You think this is true for a community effort?

 

[agris]

-42:00 Discussion about companions , both the ones in the game and the ones that were cut out of it. The companion they seem most enthusiastic about is the toy but the reason they cut it is because its too much work as it requires '' custom stuff''. But if the game does '' really really well'' and we're all good boys and girls they might add them into the game as free DLC.

Zombra what did i tell you.

 

[Darkzone]

I have a problem with this statement. Not because it is not intelligent, but because i have been there and done that. And now i think different.
Great artist are always capable to reproduce their genius and have not just one hit, because they understand the art.

You think this is true for a community effort?

Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and sometimes not.
In many communities you have leading personas that determine the direction of a project, but many communities lack / or don't such personas. And all community efforts really on the capabilities of the individual parts of the community. It was never the case that a community of idiots have achived great things, but it was observed that communities of geniuses failed. The difference between a community and one individual person, is one dimension more: social interaction with its organisation. Sometimes a genius has to make compromises in an community and sometimes the community supports wholy the genius. The greatest asset that a community can bring to the table is the ability to see and correct the mistakes of an individual person. You know if you programing something and you are looking desperately for the source of the error and a co-worker comes along and sees this in an instant. (Two pair of eyes see more than one.)
So how does this answers your question?
Yes it can apply, but it is not necessary.
So if you question is smarter then you ask me, if there is a community memory with a learning curve towards quality of an effort. And then i will answer: Yes this is very often made and could be also achived in different groups.
And if you think about how production processes are optimised towards different dimensions, than it should be instantly apparent to you the working of this process and adaptation. Other example is the success of cultures, countries, companies and etc.
So your question goes to the question, by exclusion of the mundane: Can a creative community effort be optimised and can this communities repoduce their creative success?
Surely as long as certain borders are not reached and certain events do not appear and if there is a memory effect towards the successfull or failed achivements.
Communication is a vital key in community effort for the exchange of ideas, recognition and correction of individual mistakes. A community has a much larger self correcting potential as an individual person, but certain religions show that there are things that can nullify this potential. In most projects and startups there exists the holy duality (two persons developing the idea, driving it forward and correcting each other) or even a holy trinity.
So now we go to the organisation for of a community: hierarchical or net based (ordered) or a set (disorderd) of retards running around like on amphetamine.
I will stop here, because the rest should be obvious.

 

[StaticSpine]

Yes i knew this, but i was thinking about, why didn't he steped in and stopped the bad parts? Does he have to much respect towards McComb? Or was he silent because he didn't want to disrupt the team? Nevertheless i think currently that he is the most capable on the team, because of the bloom.
His input should have the highest value, not only because he has studied and graduaded with a master degree psychologie and film (2001), but also because he was since 2001 uninterrupted in this buissness, in opposite to McComb who left the buisness in 2000 and Heine who raised orphans and played pizza cats.

Why would he do this? He was not a project lead or a chief editor, while Colin was a creative lead.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure all of them are thinking they did their best and released the best game they could.

 

[Sacred82]

So your question goes to the question, by exclusion of the mundane: Can a creative community effort be optimised and can this communities repoduce their creative success?

TTBoMK the team working on Torment isn't identical to the one working on PS:T. So how do you expect creative "genius" to trickle down from one to the other?

Unless you put some hyperbolic emphasis on individual genius versus drone work.

 

[almondblight]

Despite being a tiny studio High-level managers are too isolated from general production staff, often going weeks without meaningful interactions with the people and projects they are supposed to manage.

And people have mentioned that T:TON seems to have lacked someone with a strong vision overseeing things. But what's interesting is comparing this to the complaint about Kevin Saunders that "someone" (I guess Brother None) told Infinitron - that Saunders "ran Torment like his own private fiefdom." It's kind of a strange complaint to make about a project director, similar to "my boss is always telling me what to do." But maybe that's the InXile culture - everyone does their own thing, and if you try to enforce some kind of creative vision or quality control on a project they'll get pissed and talk shit about you the next time Fargo invites them out to beer. Then you'll get replaced by a "team player."

 

[Darkzone]

Yes i knew this, but i was thinking about, why didn't he steped in and stopped the bad parts? Does he have to much respect towards McComb? Or was he silent because he didn't want to disrupt the team? Nevertheless i think currently that he is the most capable on the team, because of the bloom.
His input should have the highest value, not only because he has studied and graduaded with a master degree psychologie and film (2001), but also because he was since 2001 uninterrupted in this buissness, in opposite to McComb who left the buisness in 2000 and Heine who raised orphans and played pizza cats.

1) Why would he do this? He was not a project lead or a chief editor, while Colin was a creative lead.
2) Anyway, I'm pretty sure all of them are thinking they did their best and released the best game they could.

1) Feedback? 2) They seem surely convinced beyond any doubt, that they gave their best.

So your question goes to the question, by exclusion of the mundane: Can a creative community effort be optimised and can this communities repoduce their creative success?

TTBoMK the team working on Torment isn't identical to the one working on PS:T. So how do you expect creative "genius" to trickle down from one to the other? Unless you put some hyperbolic emphasis on individual genius versus drone work.

Yes the creative teams compositions are different, but all creative assets (besides Heine) are veterans of exactly this kind of games in similar working roles. Ergo: They should have learned and know enough from previous projects, if they have not forgotten this knowledge due to their long absence. So yes individual experience from previous projects can trickle down. If you deny this then you deny work experience as a whole. Even as a reason for employment, and employers who search for experienced people, like with Scrum (as and example) are retarded.
Therefore it is not necessary to have an group always work together to optimise their workflow, if the individual members have worked and adapted an effective workflow in a similar environment.
McComb, Heine and Avellone are the intersection group between both projects, so yes somehow this under normal circumstances should have translated.
But let me write for you something from two of my previous posts: Success loves preparation with a lot of work in analysis and comparison.

 

[Sacred82]

Yes the creative teams compositions are different, but all creative assets (besides Heine) are veterans of exactly this kind of games in similar working roles.

Yeah well we have seen how that works out with the other nostalgia based kickstarters, most notably PoE. So are we to assume that all of these people are simply hacks who just happened to live under favorable circumstances (aka sexual frustration, repressed aggression, and cold pizza-fueled evenings in the basement) back when they made fantasies that actually worked?

I think you're underestimating another factor, and that is the desire to innovate, which is present in people and certainly artists. By its very nature, innovation often forces you to do away with things even if they worked. And in the case of Torment, you could hardly justify forcing an old creative vision on people (particularly writers) because there is McComb and Avellone on board.

 

[Infinitron]

Despite being a tiny studio High-level managers are too isolated from general production staff, often going weeks without meaningful interactions with the people and projects they are supposed to manage.

And people have mentioned that T:TON seems to have lacked someone with a strong vision overseeing things. But what's interesting is comparing this to the complaint about Kevin Saunders that "someone" (I guess Brother None) told Infinitron - that Saunders "ran Torment like his own private fiefdom." It's kind of a strange complaint to make about a project director, similar to "my boss is always telling me what to do." But maybe that's the InXile culture - everyone does their own thing, and if you try to enforce some kind of creative vision or quality control on a project they'll get pissed and talk shit about you the next time Fargo invites them out to beer. Then you'll get replaced by a "team player."

Again, the description of Saunders running the project like his own private fiefdom is my interpretation of what Brother None told me. It's not what he actually said.

Brother None said that Kevin Saunders was totally in charge of Torment and he absolutely didn't think that was a bad thing. He liked Torment's management style more than he liked Wasteland 2's management style.

My intention in interpreting it the way I did was to emphasize that the Torment project was never in Brian Fargo's orbit in the same way that Wasteland 2 was. It was not a "Team Fargo" game, it was a "Team Saunders" game.

 

[Fenix]

Success loves preparation, and that is why i included the lucky circumstances in the set of mediocre artists

Creating a game is a different proccess then painting, it involves lot of people that work together for years.
That's why I said about circumstanses.

 

[Roguey]

"We were doing so well but then Fargo/Keenan had to go snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" sounds pretty unlikely.

 

[Fenix]

My point is that instead of talking about what makes great artists, we should be talking about what makes great development practices. While we should give credit where credit is due, there is too much arbitrary personality cult in discussions about game design, and this isn’t helpful. Rather than talking about who was what in a given game, we should be talking about who did such and such, and how everything they did matched together in the process. Maybe we don’t focus on this because we don’t have too much access to this information for the most part and have to rely on testimony and postmortems years later. This limitation leads to speculation, gossip and personality cult.

Well said.

Communication is a vital key in community effort for the exchange of ideas, recognition and correction of individual mistakes. A community has a much larger self correcting potential as an individual person

You talk about that communication thing like it is magic.
You forget about most important part - personality.
If you have community that consist completely fron colned lead designer of Mass Effect Andromeda, no matter how good communications is betwen them, the only thing you'll get is midiocrity in all fields.

Personal capabilities are water in a river. Communication is a riverbed. No matter how good riverbed is if there si not much water in it.

 

[Darkzone]

Yes the creative teams compositions are different, but all creative assets (besides Heine) are veterans of exactly this kind of games in similar working roles.

Yeah well we have seen how that works out with the other nostalgia based kickstarters, most notably PoE. So are we to assume that all of these people are simply hacks who just happened to live under favorable circumstances (aka sexual frustration, repressed aggression, and cold pizza-fueled evenings in the basement) back when they made fantasies that actually worked?

Perhaps the eye of the tiger is important for such a project and sexual fustration is a driver for quality and creativity. John Carpenter is a case where the lack of resources has helped the creativity. In case of George Miller the lack of resources had no negative effect, becasue all Mad Max films are very good.

I think you're underestimating another factor, and that is the desire to innovate, which is present in people and certainly artists. By its very nature, innovation often forces you to do away with things even if they worked. And in the case of Torment, you could hardly justify forcing an old creative vision on people (particularly writers) because there is McComb and Avellone on board.

I belong to the group of "don't change a winning concept / if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and "don't be so arrogant to believe, that you may change the world". So yes perhaps i overlook this factor.
A good narrative is the same since the Gilgamesh Epos and Ramayana (~2000 BC), and translated via Odysee and Ilias into the western culture, and think how much arrogant the people are who want to change this kind of narrative.

Communication is a vital key in community effort for the exchange of ideas, recognition and correction of individual mistakes. A community has a much larger self correcting potential as an individual person

You talk about that communication thing like it is magic. You forget about most important part - personality. If you have community that consist completely fron colned lead designer of Mass Effect Andromeda, no matter how good communications is betwen them, the only thing you'll get is midiocrity in all fields. Personal capabilities are water in a river. Communication is a riverbed. No matter how good riverbed is if there si not much water in it.

Yes and i talk exact about this with the statement that the community and their efforts requires the individual capabilities of the communities members in my previous post:
"And all community efforts really on the capabilities of the individual parts of the community. It was never the case that a community of idiots have achived great things, but it was observed that communities of geniuses failed."

 

[Lurker King]

Yeah well we have seen how that works out with the other nostalgia based kickstarters, most notably PoE. So are we to assume that all of these people are simply hacks who just happened to live under favorable circumstances (aka sexual frustration, repressed aggression, and cold pizza-fueled evenings in the basement) back when they made fantasies that actually worked?

I think you're underestimating another factor, and that is the desire to innovate, which is present in people and certainly artists. By its very nature, innovation often forces you to do away with things even if they worked. And in the case of Torment, you could hardly justify forcing an old creative vision on people (particularly writers) because there is McComb and Avellone on board.

Management treats software development like manufacturing. Constantly valuing hours worked over quality of output. And will pursue feature because they fit in the schedule without any consideration if they will be worth the time or effort.

The problem with these kickstarter games is that they are treated like products manufactured by checklist design. I posted this about Obsidian in another thread:

Taylorism design. Obsidians at work. "Everyone has a function. They are very efficient!"

What allows them to make complex cRPGs really fast is the same checklist design that makes their games suck in the first place. They could be called “Taylorism Entertainment”, because their games are created on assembly lines. The producer, artists, programmers, level designers, writers, which working furiously in their particular roles to ensure a bland and massive disjointed game. That’s why you shouldn’t lose any sleep expecting any progress in the encounter design, because the worker who did this job, just made what he was told, i.e., place a bunch of enemies on this area to fill the map. The real decline is no the absence of cRPGs of yore due to lack of funding, but the belief that a superficial checklist design made by people with such disdain for traditional cRPGs can be a substitute for the real article.

The same thing can be said about InXile. The only way to deliver a cRPG without thought is by checklist manufacturing design approach. You deliver a shell of a game with some features in it, and expect that the suckers will never notice the difference. This is what taylorist checklist design looks like:

 

[Jarpie]

People are overlooking one important piece why game devs/directors/artists etc aren't able to replicate their past glory or works, especially after long time has passed, such as from Planescape: Torment. The people making those games (or films, books, music etc) aren't the same people anymore, people change with time, and they are not in the same environment or situation as they were when they made those works.

I don't really like Kevin Smith, nor most of his films, but he has said it himself that he could never again make the first Clerks film again, even if he'd try because he is not the same guy as he was who wrote and directed it, and he is in vastly different situation than he was back then. I wish people would admit this more often.

 

[Lurker King]

People are overlooking one important piece why game devs/directors/artists etc aren't able to replicate their past glory or works, especially after long time has passed, such as from Planescape: Torment. The people making those games (or films, books, music etc) aren't the same people anymore, people change with time, and they are not in the same environment or situation as they were when they made those works.

I don't really like Kevin Smith, nor most of his films, but he has said it himself that he could never again make the first Clerks film again, even if he'd try because he is not the same guy as he was who wrote and directed it, and he is in vastly different situation than he was back then. I wish people would admit this more often.

Nobody is expecting them to be the same people, we are expecting than to have the capacity to deliver quality games, because that’s their job. If anything they should be better now, not worse. At the very least, they should know the basics of what they were doing and have the decency to hear criticisms. It’s obviously that they aren’t capable of neither. They didn’t understand the things that made PS:T work, and are full of themselves. Most people in this forum know why the game doesn’t work. If they lost the interest in their job, or think that shitty game like ToN is good, rest assured that we will find other developers “who haven’t changed”, and can deliver the games we want.

 

[Excidium II]

People are overlooking one important piece why game devs/directors/artists etc aren't able to replicate their past glory or works, especially after long time has passed, such as from Planescape: Torment. The people making those games (or films, books, music etc) aren't the same people anymore, people change with time, and they are not in the same environment or situation as they were when they made those works.

I don't really like Kevin Smith, nor most of his films, but he has said it himself that he could never again make the first Clerks film again, even if he'd try because he is not the same guy as he was who wrote and directed it, and he is in vastly different situation than he was back then. I wish people would admit this more often.

Nobody is expecting them to be the same people, we are expecting than to have the capacity to deliver quality games, because that’s their job. If anything they should be better now, not worse. At the very least, they should know the basics of what they were doing and have the decency to hear criticisms. It’s obviously that they aren’t capable of either. They didn’t understood the things that made PS:T work, and are full of themselves. Most people in this forum know why the game doesn’t work. If they lost the interest in their job, or think that shitty game like ToN is good, rest assured that we will find other developers “who haven’t changed”, and can deliver the games we want.

How can they be good at making videogames when they don't even play videogames.

 

[StaticSpine]

People are overlooking one important piece why game devs/directors/artists etc aren't able to replicate their past glory or works, especially after long time has passed, such as from Planescape: Torment. The people making those games (or films, books, music etc) aren't the same people anymore, people change with time, and they are not in the same environment or situation as they were when they made those works.

I don't really like Kevin Smith, nor most of his films, but he has said it himself that he could never again make the first Clerks film again, even if he'd try because he is not the same guy as he was who wrote and directed it, and he is in vastly different situation than he was back then. I wish people would admit this more often.

I agree, but this is a seditious though on Codex since everyone here thinks MCA can make another PS:T anytime or make an awesome RPG from any game.

 

[Jarpie]

People are overlooking one important piece why game devs/directors/artists etc aren't able to replicate their past glory or works, especially after long time has passed, such as from Planescape: Torment. The people making those games (or films, books, music etc) aren't the same people anymore, people change with time, and they are not in the same environment or situation as they were when they made those works.

I don't really like Kevin Smith, nor most of his films, but he has said it himself that he could never again make the first Clerks film again, even if he'd try because he is not the same guy as he was who wrote and directed it, and he is in vastly different situation than he was back then. I wish people would admit this more often.

Nobody is expecting them to be the same people, we are expecting than to have the capacity to deliver quality games, because that’s their job. If anything they should be better now, not worse. At the very least, they should know the basics of what they were doing and have the decency to hear criticisms. It’s obviously that they aren’t capable of either. They didn’t understood the things that made PS:T work, and are full of themselves. Most people in this forum know why the game doesn’t work. If they lost the interest in their job, or think that shitty game like ToN is good, rest assured that we will find other developers “who haven’t changed”, and can deliver the games we want.

Oh, I agree, but they tried to recreate PS:T, and replicate what made it special, instead of trying to create something new, and that's what I got from CMcC & CO. You can make very good shit even if you're older or in different situation, but you can't get the same genie out of the same bottle again, if you get what I mean. Like you said, you gotta be able to see what made the previous work great, and use it to create something new.

 

[Jarpie]

People are overlooking one important piece why game devs/directors/artists etc aren't able to replicate their past glory or works, especially after long time has passed, such as from Planescape: Torment. The people making those games (or films, books, music etc) aren't the same people anymore, people change with time, and they are not in the same environment or situation as they were when they made those works.

I don't really like Kevin Smith, nor most of his films, but he has said it himself that he could never again make the first Clerks film again, even if he'd try because he is not the same guy as he was who wrote and directed it, and he is in vastly different situation than he was back then. I wish people would admit this more often.

I agree, but this is a seditious though on Codex since everyone here thinks MCA can make another PS:T anytime or make an awesome RPG from any game.

Hopefully MCA still has it, at least he is still good writer from what I've seen, but time will tell if he ever takes charge of any new project(s).

 

[Lurker King]

Oh, I agree, but they tried to recreate PS:T, and replicate what made it special, instead of trying to create something new.

No, they didn't. You can read about the differences in this post.

 

[an Administrator]

"PS:T was a mistake should have been an action game with less text"~ Chris Avellone